Despite having my luxurious coverless critter 'supplement' that came with the 3e GM screen, I'm still trying to track down the two paranormal animals of ______ books, for the pictures at the very least. I also have the street sam catalogue. Are there any other sourcebooks for previous editions that still have value to the SR3 GM with the new versions? What old adventures are worth investing in?

As a side note, does anyone know a site (or want to post a method) for converting 1st and 2nd edition stats into 3rd?

Rigger Black Book has some nice vehicle pics.

Cybertechnology has some nice cyber pics.

2nd to 3rd is identical.

1st to 2nd is a bigger change.

What do you want to know?

The question is, does the new Rigger 3 Revised have all of the pictures that appeared in the RBB or is it still lacking some even though they've been added?

Fields of Fire and Shadowtech have lots of nice gear/cyber/bio pictures in them. If you're looking for more than just pictures, almost all of the older books have stuff in them that makes them worth getting. At least, that's what I've found as I've gone back to fill in my collection.

Old adventures that are worth looking around for, Harlequin/Harlequin's Back if you like or don't mind the IE stuff, pretty good modules. I definately enjoyed the old Super Tuesday stuff, although that's not too terribly dated. Unfortunately, I haven't played too many of the older modules, although Dragon Hunt and Queen Euphoria are both rather fun.

Also - if you are looking for *flavour*, then the earlier editions are more fun. SR3 is as dry as a dog's biscuit...

Yes, the older books have lots of great flavor. That's my main reason for going back and collecting as many as I can. It seems to be assumed that you have every previous SR book when they write a new one, as they overlap info as little as possible.

I love the older books personally. Then again, the older books are what got me into Shadowrun in the first place.

Shadowbeat is pretty cool for media/music type rules (though if you ever play a PC that also happens to be a rock musician in my game, expect to get killed. A lot.)

Shadowtech, SSC, Fields of Fire, and all the old equipment books are great for both the pictures and the shadowtalk sections -- something sorely missing from Man and Machine and the Canon Companion.

Tir Tairngire and Aztlan are both great location books if you don't mind the IE/dragon/Horrors stuff. The Denver boxed set is also cool for the maps as well as the interesting GM's book that had several options for each NPC/location/etc. presented so that even if your players got hold of a copy of the book, they wouldn't automatically know all the dirty little secrets their characters shouldn't.

Harlequin is probably the best adventure "track" Shadowrun has had in IMHO. And that's saying a lot with Brainscan, Survival of the Fittest, Harlequin's Back, etc. out there. I personally love anything with the bugs, esp. Universal Brotherhood and the adventure included with it.

The best thing about Shadowrun is that even though it's gone through three editions, most of the books from the older editions are still useful. Dig out an old AD&D 1st Ed sourcebook and see how relevent any of the info is to D20 D&D. Not very much I'm willing to bet.

My advice is get a second job for a couple of weeks and start scouring eBay for the old OOP books. I'm personally only 10 books away from having every single Shadowrun book (except the novels...I'm going to start on them after I finish the game books ) I rarely even get to play Shadowrun because of the small town I live in, but the books are seriously some of the best written in the entire gaming industry. You can read the "How it came to pass" section of the sourcebooks and then from there read probably 75% of the sourcebooks without even knowing the rules to the game yet STILL enjoy reading them.

Kudos to both FASA and FanPro for their great work.

The Abstruse One

Is the Corporate Sourcebook still hanging around? The descriptions of the corprorations and how runs could effect their ratings was something that I always found interesting as well...

Kage

Corporate Shadowfiles is the book you're thinking of. And no, it's currently OOP. I believe the newer books, Corporate Download, is also out of print. If you want a lot of info about the specific corps, get Corporate Download. If you want a LOT of background info on corporations in general (and a good primer for an Economics 1301 class), then get Corporate Shadowfiles. I like the latter personally just because it has a vertiable shitload of info about how corporations work, how stocks work, and the various tricks corporations use against one another.

The Abstruse One

An interesting note: after all this time, Transys Nueronet in the DotSW sourcebook was given a Corporate Shadowfiles-type set of ratings!

Personally, I have always held that the Chris Kubasik story in Virtual Realities 1.0 is the best primer for decking-ever. Even two editions later. Plus, it introduces Halberstam.

No, no connection whatsoever. Both Renny and Lucifer pretty much drop through a hole in the bottom of the metaplot. Halberstam goes on though.

I'm sad to say I dinnae recall a good SR bit to cover magic...even in the novels, magic tends to get the shaft.

As for 2nd ed adventures, I'd go for Blood in the Boardroom, probably my favourite story in all Shadowrun. If Renraku Arcology: Shutdown can be called an "adventure" it's a damn great one.

@ Sepherim:
According to the book's spine it's an adventure. I love it, so eeeviiil...

@ Ancient History:
Those Transys Neuronet corporate ratings use the system published in Corporate Download don't they?

I'm showing my age...yes, they do. It just surprised me because of how rarely such ratings are used.

How can Corporate Download be out of print? How old is that book?

I believe that Corporate Download was mistakenly thought to be sold out at one time; Fast Forward has copies in stock now though, so it's obviously in print and available.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the original Seattle Sourcebook. If you run a Seattle-based game, this is just a must have. Add New Seattle and you are in GM heaven.

Target:UCAS is a good book if you want to run in Detroit, Boston, or Chicago post Bug City.

Harlequin and Universal Brotherhood were simply awesome adventures. I also liked Maria Mercurial (the first SR adventure I ever played it), and Queen Euphoria. Dark Angel was good, although I had to do some reworking of it to make it fit my game.

Corporate Shadowfiles is an excellent book if you do a lot of corp-based runs. It primarily deals with how corps work, explaining things like insider trading, white knights, management buyouts, Selling Short, etc... No stats for things, except for the megas at that time.

Underworld Sourcebook is likewise the same for the major underworld players. So if you want to run a Yak, Mob, Seoulpa Ring, Triad game, you will want this. Really good stuff on all things criminal.

2nd Edition Awakenings has some neat info on magical traditions, tactics used by and against people like magic cops, etc... I like it for the flavor, as it can add some depth to your characters, and give you some ideas as a player or GM that you would probably otherwise never consider.

Cybertechnology, for the Hatchetman/Street Samurai story and the Transcript.

Aztlan is a must for all the old conspiracy theorists, and Cyberpirates! must be included for the price comparisons on sex slaves if not any of the wonderful material contained within.

FASA is most certainly not printing copies. I can think of three simple reasons why FFE may have thought it was out of stock and then brought it back without it being reprinted:

1. They simply lost track of the books in the warehouse and assumed it was out of stock. A simple spreadsheet error could accomplish this.

2. They were out of stock of it at the warehouse, but another distributor had an excess stock, so they bought it back.

I always liked Ivy & Chrome. Love, revenge, mad Azzie mages and vague references to "Old Gods"...doesn't get much better.

IMHO, I can run a kick-rear SR game by using just the main book, Sprawl Sites and the original Seattle Sourcebook. While I like most of the 3rd edition stuff, the older books were much more in depth about the how's and why's. The depth of the older books, especially when compared to the newer sourcebooks is readily apparent. I used Corporate Shadowfiles as an outline for my Corporations class in law school (and made a B+ I might add) because it was so thorough. The original Seattle Sourcebook is still the definitive guide to Seattle...New Seattle pales in comparison.

A lot of it is not FASA or FanPro's fault...after all, Nigel Fidley passed away right after the completion of the Aztlan sourcebook. Nigel Fidley had a rare gift of making the complex understandable. I think most of the new writers either lack that ability or don't feel the necessity to do so. Some of the new rule books are so complex they're almost useless. It think that's a shame.

I hope Dragons of the Sixth World is a sign of what the newer sourcebooks are going to be like. DotSW seemed to me more like the old 2nd Ed sourcebooks than most of the others.

Want to have a fit one night when there's nothing else to do? Go through your old pile of 2nd Ed sourcebooks and re-read them all backwards and watch how PERFECTLY everything was set up. The metaplot then was like this beautiful tapestry that you only saw one thread at a time...you were so obsessed with this thread or that thread that you missed all the others and how they linked together. Tir, the Azzies, and SK know about the bugs before we ever know what's up with all of them. Then we get the skinny on the Tir with all the IE conspiracies and we see shadows of the Horrors. Then we get the Aztlan book with info on all their evil stuff and we get a taste of the Otaku...it's just beautiful.

Since joining these boards, I learned all kinds of stuff about Shadowrun that I missed in 10 years of reading the books. I went back to re-read sourcebooks I've read a thousand and one times before and saw all kinds of things I'd never noticed. I highly recommend doing this if you've never done it.

The Abstruse One

how could I have forgotten "Bottled Demon"?! shame on me.

@ Velocity: get something going and you can have my .02 . I do pretty good work on brainstorming and editing.

If you are interested Velocity, I can send you my notes on my revamped versions of Dark Angel and DNA/DOA. They are in .html already as that is how I do all my adventures. They are not perfect however, as I also scribbled notes in the hard-copy books too.